Copyright is Serious

An acquaintance of mine has self-published a book through Lulu.  Her interests include spiritual protection and healing.

Two people in France falsely claiming the title Frater (because no Frater would behave this way) have translated the book into French without her permission and are either seeking a publisher or selling it — it’s not clear which.  Either is a violation of copyright.

They are in violation of international copyright treaties, specifically the Berne Convention, and will therefore be subject to criminal charges in France for stealing this intellectual property.  The two people responsible style themselves Tau Zorobabel and Luxaor.

I’m not sure if the author has the resources to pursue her rights in this matter.  I hope that she does.  I also hope that any French publishers considering this unauthorized copy will realize that it violates French law to publish it.

Anyone who wishes to legimately publish an author’s work in translation can contact that writer’s publisher (in my case Llewellyn, and thank you) to purchase the rights to do so.  They are not particularly exhorbitant.  I welcome all such legimate translations.  Illegal violations of copyright should be pursued, however.

End of Semester

The thrill of the end of the semester lasts until the second day off, I’ve learned.  At that point, I look at my unfinished novel, call myself names for being so derivative and dull, and start waiting for the next semester to start.  But it ends happily — I sit down finally and write a bit.  You can never predict how well a day’s writing will go by how you feel in the morning, especially before lunch.

I’m about fifty pages or so from finishing this draft, then I can start work on my next work of nonfiction.  I don’t know why I’m writing a novel, actually.  I’m pretty bad at fiction, and I doubt it’ll ever see print.  I would like to say it’s just for the fun of it, but it’s not that much fun.  So I have no idea.

Work in Idleness

My last post got some response.  I was particularly interested by the comment by Frater R. O., who suggested that guilt is appropriate when one should be working, but isn’t.

I think there’s a place for idleness, though, in work.  I sometimes think that the writing process itself is built on staring at blank walls and thinking about not much in particular in a conscious sense.  But part of me just gets restless, and that’s the part that needs to calm down at the idea generation stage.

That might be why revision is becoming my favorite stage in the writing process.  The ideas are there, and the goal is just to make them clearer — it’s a more defined goal than the earlier drafting stages, and best of all, there’s obvious improvement visible as one works.  And, unlike editing, revision engages the actual ideas.

The . . . Great? . . . Work?

Today was not particularly productive.  I was going to bang out two of my three syllabi today, but that didn’t really happen and probably won’t.  I spent most of the day sitting in my still-empty house reading a paperback and waiting for a guy to come and write some numbers down on the gas meter.

I was supposed to write an article for Rending the Veil magazine, a really excellent online magical journal, but the holidays kind of ate my brain.

Ideas are weird.  I get them in clusters: I’ll get lots of poetry ideas for a week or two, some fiction ideas, some ideas about things I’d like to write about magic — and then nothing.  Or I’ll get three ideas for scholarly research I’d like to do, and then nothing for weeks.  Mostly, I’ve been gearing my mind up to course construction for the upcoming semester, so I wonder if that’s why I’m not so productive writing right now.

It’s also weird how guilty it makes me feel sometimes, as if I should be completely productive in every single field I write in all the time.

Magic Power Language Symbol is out

My second book, Magic Power Language Symbol:  A Magician’s Exploration of Linguistics, has been released.  Donald Michael Kraig calls it a “tour de force.”  You can buy it at your local bookstore (if they don’t have it, request it).  Or you can order it from Amazon or Llewellyn.

As far as this blog goes — I need to make some administrative changes and then I’ll be able to revive it.  I apologize for disappearing, but I’ve had other claims on my time lately.

Writer’s Group

I went to a writer’s group yesterday.  I don’t go for the criticism — I’m pretty good at this point at self-revision.  But it is nice to actually see people and watch their reaction to particular pieces of writing, in person.  I also admit that I like hearing other people’s work, and do my best to offer constructive advice.  I really enjoyed hearing the poems and stories that were read in my sub-group (there were enough of us that we had to break into two groups).

Afterwards, we went out to a bar.  One of the fellows began lecturing someone else in the group about how “we’re all just energy, vibrating at certain frequencies.”  I sighed audibly.  Sometimes, I feel like I got my work cut out for me.  Heh.

New Computer

I just bought a new computer. Should be arriving in a week or so. Probably more money than I ought to have spent — but then again, I can (kind of) afford it, and this one is getting a bit obsolete. Ah, who the hell am I kidding? This new computer should be able to run Oblivion, and that’s what really matters. I say “should” because, in my experience, you can never be sure — but still, it’s got a 2.4 GHz processor, 2 MB of RAM, and an NVIDIA 8800 GTS video card. If it can’t run Oblivion, well, I give up. This will be the fanciest computer I have ever owned, even though I did pass up Vista. I hope it works out well. A lot of money to throw at a toy (even if it is a toy I use for work).
My goal is to use as much free software and open source stuff as possible. Firefox for the browser, Avast! as the virus protection, and OpenOffice as my word processor. Let’s see how that works out. Must be the socialist in me, but it doesn’t seem like you should need to pay extra to surf the web, be safe doing so, and write a book. Any other suggestions of free and useful software I can use? (Oh, yeah, iTunes, too, if that counts).

The Internet

I like the Internet a lot.  I use it for a lot of very, very useful stuff.  I also waste time on it, and sometimes, it depresses me.  Sometimes, indeed, it’s not what we had hoped it would be.

Are You the Author of “Postmodern Magic?”

Holy cow, I got my first out-of-the-blue “Hey, are you the author of — ” thing yesterday.  I was working with someone I barely knew at this thing I do for community service (not the “busted with drugs” kind of community service but the “volunteering because it feels awesome” kind), which involves working with kids who are learning creative writing.  Since I’m also a poet, I talk mostly about poetry, but since I’m also the only counselor at the camp who has sold a book, I talk about the publishing process and the vast quantities of glorious, glorious money one makes off of royalties.  ahem.

Later, on the way to run an errand, the camp director — whom, as I said, I met essentially this week — said “Patrick, are you the author of Postmodern Magic?”  “Yes,” I said, “I certainly am.”  Keep in mind this guy is nearly twice my age (and I’m twice the age of the kids at the camp — it’s a neat mathematical thing), pretty clearly has never stopped in the occult section of his local bookstore, and probably wouldn’t believe in magic if it bit him in the bum.  So he had clearly googled me.  As part of a background check, I’m guessing, and that has had me chuckling for the last two days straight.  “So I guess you’re . . . Pagan?”  “Yup,” I said, “I certainly am.”

A moment of silence can have a flavor.  It can taste like a strenuous attempt to accept the odd, it can taste like cognitive dissonance, it can taste like the gap between two worlds that really can’t touch, no matter how hard one or either of us might try.

This year was the first the other counselors weren’t my friends, but absolute strangers.  We not only didn’t share a world view, I’m not sure we shared a reality, and our views of the numinous powers of writing were kind of — ahem — different.  I said to our female counselor, “I look forward to this every year; it really means a lot to me.  Often, it’s the high point of my year.”  She said “That’s really pathetic.”  But she didn’t see God in the face of these kids, when they found a way to say what they thought.  One of the kids told me that he had never, in his entire life up until now, found a way to feel like himself and write from what he really was, instead of what he thought he should be.   That’s God.  No wonder it’s the highlight of my year.

I didn’t make friends with the counselors.  They’re too far away from my world, in other orbits entirely, but I wish them well and hope they find pleasure in what brings them pleasure.  As for the kids — I am looking for a way to work with teenagers more regularly.  I think poetry has a lot to offer kids, a kind of magic so much more important than the invocation of the Holy Guardian Angel and so much miraculous and unlikely than the mere idea that a talisman might affect my world.

Okay, Vacation Time

I was hoping to finish the draft of this thing before I did a summer seminar on writing, but that’s clearly not going to happen, so I’m taking a break.  I realized after finally finishing the nightmare chapter from hell (”What is reality?  A thousand words.  Go!  And remember, someone will likely read whatever you write as ‘if it’s true for you, it’s true,’ no matter what you actually say”).

Then I realized, I’m writing about ontology and epistemology, not magic.  And I’m sure as hell not doing any magic, either.  So I’m going to take it a little easy for a few days, I think, do some actual magic, and then be incommunicado for a week.